


the rivers and the lakes that you're used to

by dogworldchampion



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Neal and Yuki finally visit Yuki's home, Neal is entranced, Yuki misses it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:27:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27963011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogworldchampion/pseuds/dogworldchampion
Summary: “I can’t believe you grew up with this,” Neal shouted at his wife over the thunder of the water falling behind them. They’d left her family’s home that morning for a hike that even Akemi could manage on her chubby, still-unstable legs, with plenty of help from a da willing to carry her on his shoulders for long stretches while she pulled his hair like the reins of the pony she was just learning to ride. It was his first time in the Islands, after years of war and raising an infant that had prevented a long sea voyage, and he was still in awe of the beauty that felt almost commonplace among the mountains of his wife’s homeland.“There’s nothing quite like it in Tortall,” she replied. The loud pitch of her voice was in sharp contrast with the soft, wistful look on her face. Neal vowed in that moment he would never again let her spend eight years without returning home.
Relationships: Yukimi noh Daiomoru/Nealan of Queenscove
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	the rivers and the lakes that you're used to

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr prompt: neal + waterfall
> 
> man naming neal's daughter was the hardest thing i've done in ages. will she still be akemi next time i revisit her? who knows, but she is today. i'm @the-pontiac-bandit if you want to send me more of these or tell me what you think of this one!

Neal was blown away by the deafening roar that felt so tangible it might swallow him whole. He’d never found himself silenced by anything, be it the worst punishment Lord Wyldon’s surprisingly creative mind could devise or the sight of his wife on their wedding day, joy shining in her face while Lalasa’s finest work trailed through the dust of a northern border fort. This, though, threatened to render him fully speechless, and not just because his wife, standing by his side, couldn’t have heard even his best battlefield shout.

He bounced Akemi, nearly three but not yet too big to be held, absentmindedly against his hip as he stared. He could feel her giggle as a vibration against his shoulder, but even with her face inches from his ear, he couldn’t trace the sound of her voice from the thunder engulfing them. He spared a moment to look at his daughter, seeing her hair curling wildly above her head with the spray that threatened to choke them and smoothing it with his spare hand, but it was only a moment before his eyes were drawn back to the sight before them.

The waterfall stretched nearly four hundred feet above his head, dwarfing him in ways he’d never imagined. It cascaded over rocks and around plants tenacious enough to grow in its path, clinging desperately to the side of the cliff. He’d read about waterfalls, of course, had studied the effects of gravity on falling water, and of running water on rock, with his mother in the evenings as a child. He’d even seen some small ones in the years he’d ridden the length and breadth of Tortall with the prickliest knight-mistress in the Eastern Lands—although, he had to admit to himself, that wasn’t saying much, as there were only two.

He didn’t realize his mouth was hanging open until a fly flew in it. He sputtered, bending over and coughing desperately in an attempt to redirect the small insect away from both his windpipe and his stomach. Akemi laughed louder, although he still couldn’t hear her, thinking that his desperate hacks were a game. Then, he felt someone’s arms close around his daughter, and he let Yuki take her, freeing both hands to scrape at his tongue in one final effort to eliminate any stray legs.

He straightened, wiping his hands dramatically on his tunic as he stared once again at the majesty before them, but all too soon, Yuki had a hand on his arm to pull him back.

They retreated to a spot in the trees, only yards away from their prior place but more suited to conversation, as long as that conversation were held at a volume more appropriate for the training yards, or perhaps a ship being captained through a hurricane, than polite company.

“I can’t believe you grew up with this,” Neal shouted at his wife. They’d left her family’s home that morning for a hike that even Akemi could manage on her chubby, still-unstable legs, with plenty of help from a da willing to carry her on his shoulders for long stretches while she pulled his hair like the reins of the pony she was just learning to ride. It was his first time in the Islands, after years of war and raising an infant that had prevented a long sea voyage, and he was still in awe of the beauty that felt almost commonplace among the mountains of his wife’s homeland.

“There’s nothing quite like it in Tortall,” she replied. The pitch of her voice was in sharp contrast with the soft, wistful look on her face. Neal vowed in that moment he would never again let her spend eight years without returning home.

They stood in silence for another moment, listening to the crash of the waterfall in front of them, but Akemi wouldn’t allow them to stand still for long. She’d begun insistently tugging at her mother’s necklace as she talked, demanding _motion_ in all the ways she knew how. In accordance with their daughter’s iron will, they moved further back, towards a clearing dry enough that she would not slip on the wet rock.

They watched their daughter play in silence as she added enough mud to her kimono to make even Neal wince.

Yuki was the first one to break their trance. “I don’t think I realized how much I missed this.” Her voice was quiet and sad, in a way that told him just how much effort it had taken his usually happy, eager-to-please wife to voice her thought. “I’m not sure how I’ll board the ship again next week.”

Neal thought of Yuki’s parents and younger brother, waiting for them with a hot lunch back at her childhood home. They reminded him almost painfully of his parents and Jessamine, in the ways they found to laugh with each other—or smile silently with just the corners of their eyes, as the case may be—in large stone hallways and communicate boundless love in a ruffle of hair or a gliding touch across a shoulder. His parents-in-law had been strangers to him a mere three weeks ago, but they’d embraced him as one of their own in a way that gave him just a taste of the heartbreak his wife must be feeling at leaving them behind.

“We could stay.” The words left his mouth unbidden, before he’d had time to think of the ramifications of such an offer, but just as immediately, he knew they were true. He could not bear asking her to leave the magic of this place. “We’d have to return, of course, to gather our things and to say goodbye to my parents, but we could—”

She cut him off with a surprisingly sharp elbow to his unprepared side. “We couldn’t. We have a life elsewhere.” Her words weren’t nearly as final as Neal knew she hoped they sounded.

“We could. Jessamine would be thrilled to manage Queenscove in our absence—it’s her home as much as it is ours. We could return to the Yamani court, or I’m sure Roald could find posts for us as ambassadors of some form. Akemi could grow up knowing her Yamani roots, and we’d be happy here.” His own heart cracked, just a little, at the thought of leaving his sister alone with his brothers’ graves in their childhood home, of abandoning the king-to-be and the realm in whose service he found genuine fulfillment, but his heart also knew he could for the woman whose elbow had come to rest more gently against his side.

“What of her Tortallan roots?”

Neal was genuinely surprised by the question. “Well, of course, I could teach her about—” 

“You couldn’t teach her all of it, just like you couldn’t do the work you love or visit your brothers on holidays or argue endlessly with your father over the best way to heal a fracture.” Yuki cut him off, her voice finding more resolve the longer she spoke. 

Neal thought, with a groan so quiet he was sure Yuki could not hear it over the still-present roar of the waterfall in the distance behind them, of the reports from George that were most certainly piling up on his desk in his absence, and of the lecture he was sure to receive from his father’s second-in-command about the shifts in the city’s clinics everyone else had been forced to take in his stead.

“Thinking of work?” When he turned to look at her, shocked that she’d apparently read his mind, Yuki’s eyes had a glimmer of wickedness in them, amusement breaking openly across her usually-guarded expression. He leaned down to kiss her firmly enough to wipe the smile off her face, whispering something wicked of his own in her ear as he broke away. She was unruffled.

“My point still stands,” she continued, a more serious air returning to her voice. “We belong in Tortall.”

He knew she was right, and he knew how much it cost her to say it. He took her hands in both of his and turned to face her for the first time. “I would have stayed for you, you know. Truly, I would have.”

“I know. That’s why I can go back for you.”

Her reply was simple, but firm, and the only appropriate response seemed to be to release one of her hands and lunge out to grab their daughter, whose face was now fully caked in fresh mud. He gathered his wife and daughter in his long arms and held them tightly there for a long moment without a care for the mud Akemi smeared on his tunic, listening to the thunder of falling water in his wife’s homeland.


End file.
